Chapter XI: Driving in the Ponies

For a season the soul of Jacob shrank from all life and found its only peace in solitude. Now and again, for a day or two, the wish to be alone would leave him; then he would go to Marydrew, or Adam Winter, and pour out a flood of futile opinions. They bore with him and strove to restore his peace. But he would soon seclude himself again and, on one or two occasions, he spent the night alone at Huntingdon. He had determined to dwell there in time to come; but those that cared for him trusted that before spring returned he would change his mind. William, when opportunity offered, pressed occupation on his friend and assured him that only by way of work would serenity return; but Jacob could not work. His restlessness drove him to be moving always. He left his business in the hands of Peter and was impatient if either he, or George Middleweek, even desired his advice.

He would not see a doctor. He declared that the physician who attended upon his wife had poisoned his mind against all doctors. But he spoke kindly of his own attendant at the Cottage Hospital. Sometimes he was violent and blasphemed before his children. He often went to his wife's grave, to see if the soil were sinking. Auna was glad on the days that he chose to do this, because it made him easier. His furies seldom extended to any at Red House, though he turned much against John Henry and Avis, because they did not come to see him. Once or twice he set out to visit them on horseback, yet always changed his mind and rode into the moor instead.

Auna often begged to come with him when he wandered away; but he rarely suffered her to do so. For a time he seemed indifferent even to her--a phase that represented the extremity of his distemper.

"You're too much like your mother," he told her once. "I doubt I'll be able to endure you much longer. It's living with her ghost, rather than her child."

In one of his wildest moods he had said that; but she knew he did not mean it. He was careless of his garments and person now and looked to Auna for a thousand attentions--indeed had long done so.

She suspected that her father wanted to die and asked old William what should be done about it; but Mr. Marydrew advised nothing.

"Let him go his own gait," he told her. "If he dies, he dies; but more like he'll grow easier and come back to himself presently."

Jacob brought news from the moor. His values had all changed and sometimes a sort of peace did crown his lonely days; but it was not a sane peace. He talked as though human beings signified nothing; he lifted the unconscious creatures and their good and evil to first place in his speech and showed an interest in the prosperity of the coneys, the welfare of the fox and her cubs, the providence of the badger and his shifts to live through the naked winter months. At no time could it be said that he spoke as one insane; but he hovered on the brink of mental disaster and displayed a distortion of perspective akin to craziness.

George Middleweek suspected that Bullstone was concealing himself behind a pretence; but Adam Winter, to whom he explained his view, knew Jacob better.

"He couldn't pretend," he said. "His brains are on the knife's edge. All we can hope is that his bodily strength will save him, and that his mind will right itself."

They debated whether speech or silence was the better for Jacob, and agreed that his passion, venting itself in words, served to let the poison free. The occasional periods of taciturnity, when Jacob would not speak, or eat, or even move sometimes for many hours, they believed the more dangerous signals. So they watched him and did what they might, which was little; while Auna, grown to a woman in mind, kept as near to her father as possible, studied his every mood and learned in time how best to meet each wave of feeling, where to oppose, where to heap endearments, where to talk and throw herself into the subject of the moment, where to listen and make no answer that might fret.

There came a day when a harsh cold fell upon the moors and Robert Elvin rode to bring in some of his ponies. Beyond Ugborough's rocky summit, where its ramparts rose above the grey web of the forest, the waste swept in featureless folds northerly for mile on mile. All was now sombre, iron rusty and black. Sad-coloured garments held the hills and over them a wind from the north-east swept, dry and bitter in the blade. It brought a haze to lessen the austerity of the winter heath, and it made a low whimper, which rose and fell, now brushing the sharper sound of running waters to the ear, now deadening their murmur as it lulled, now increasing to gusts, that woke a tinkle from the dead heather and hummed to a deeper note upon the granite face of some great stone. Where the hills fell to each other's feet, rillets ran winding irregular threads among the boulders; and here was the highest light of these far-flung sobrieties; where, at fall and ripple, flashed grey foam, or spread some still and limpid pool to reflect the ash-coloured sky.

It seemed that winter had uttered an ultimate note, that the vitality of earth was sunk to its lowest, that her heart beat more slowly and her sleep sounded deeper than at any day until now. It was the dark hour before the dawn of another year and inanimate life seemed to have receded beneath the surface of things, while animate life had retreated to the greater comfort of the low lands.

Robert found his ponies, a dozen of them, clustered knee-deep in dead fern on the lee of a tor. They were dejected and showed pleasure at his coming. He sent his dog forward and soon the little cavalcade was trotting off the hills, down through a long and narrow coomb which opened above Owley, two miles to the south.

Then suddenly he came upon his father-in-law sitting as still as the stone under him. It was uplifted by the way in the eye of the harsh wind; yet Jacob reposed indifferent, gazing over the moor, his stick beside him, his hands clasped together. Robert stopped, dismounted and approached.

"Hullo, father! You didn't ought to be up here in this wind," he said and extended his hand. Jacob shook it and apparently proceeded with his thoughts aloud.

"I like to feel my marrow growing cold inside the bones. It teaches you how it'll be at the end, when the last cold comes that no fire can heat again. The crested plovers are all gone from the moor, Bob Elvin. You see them, so wise and dainty are they, running about in the lew fields and round the corn-stacks, like little pixy people. And they lift their kitten cries to keep themselves warm. But when the weather breaks, they'll soon fly back to their haunts again."

"So they will then. Get moving now. Drop in and have a tell with us at Owley and a good cup of tea to warm you. I'm taking my ponies down to the yard for shelter. Thank the Lord we're well to do for hay this year; the cattle can spare them a bite. We've got enough for all."

"I'm troubled for the foxes, however. There's no security in nature, Robert. All hand to mouth; and the rabbits lie so low, and there's not a beetle or a frog moving."

Robert laughed.

"The baggering foxes have picked up one or two of my chickens of late," he said.

"Don't be too hard on them. They're a fine, fearless people and it's cruel work standing before hounds on an empty belly. No security. Many soft-billed birds are dropping dead out of the trees by night--just for hunger and cold. No mercy shown; none expected. Only a man here and there knows the meaning of mercy. But the creatures have their bit of luck, Robert. Terror of death cannot fret them and sense of wrong can't wound their hearts. Great privileges you see. And how's your fine wife? A better wife than daughter, I hope?"

"Don't say that, father. Our thoughts are often along with you. Avis and me would be terrible glad to comfort you if we could."

"Judith Huxam, my children's grandmother, once said that I should call upon the hills to cover me. She said right. I have. But they refuse. A very respectable thing to worship the Lord, Bob Elvin; only take heed to stop at that. Don't try and follow Him, or do what He tells you, else you'll be locked up, or get into the workhouse. Worship at a distance. There may be better bread than is made of wheat, but human nature can't digest it--can't digest the teaching of Christ. It's no good. The lawyers and the politicians, the traders and the soldiers, and the sailors and even the parsons--such as are honest--they'll all tell you it won't work."

"Come on, father; don't sit here no more. Jump up on my cob and I'll walk beside you."

"I'm going to give Owley to your wife. It was ordained from the first, and my Margery agreed it should be so."

"You have, master. A very grand start in life you've offered us."

"Did my late wife know about it?"

"Yes, Mrs. Bullstone knew all about it."

"Good. I killed her, Bob. If I'd fired a gun into her heart, I couldn't have killed her surer. A pretty awful thing; but have no fear I'm not going to pay for it. When a man commits murder, they ought not to put him away: they ought to keep him alive, as long as ever they can, and let his sin gnaw into him, like a cancer, inch by inch. All sin's a cancer: it eats the heart, but it leaves the core to go on throbbing, so that the sinner may suffer as long as his flesh and bones hang together."

"Don't you say these fearful things. Come now, else Avis will wonder what's happened to me. There's a lot of good life ahead of you, Mr. Bullstone, and a lot of valuable work to be done--so clever as you are."

"There is--I grant that much. Much work for my fellow-creatures. But you can't accept man till you've denied God, Robert. That's a hard saying for your boy's ears, no doubt. Yet so it is. You can't make man your first thought and his welfare your faith, till you've put God Almighty and all other graven images behind your back."

"Don't you think that; you'll come back to God presently. I'm sure He's waiting for you, father."

Jacob shook his head.

"I don't ask you to do the like," he said. "Let every man trust his God so long as he can, and so far as he can. But be honest, and when your dark day comes and you can't trust any more, then fear not to say so."

Bob remounted his pony, which was beginning to shiver.

"I must get on," he declared. "And I pray you'll come down and drink a dish of tea before you start for home. Do now, father."

Jacob appeared to have forgotten him; but then he turned to him again.

"Small creatures fall light, remember. A grasshopper can drop where a bullock would break his neck. Pity's often wasted on those that don't need it and withheld from such as do. I fell heavy. I'm heavy in body and heavy in mind. I'm smashed up for good and all now; but no pity for me--no pity in Heaven above, or on the earth beneath. And I doubt--I very much doubt, between ourselves, whether I'd take it even if 'twas offered, young fellow."

"You'll find peace--you'll find peace. I'm sure there's a lot are praying for you," murmured Elvin. Then Jacob rose off the rock, nodded to him and limped off northward.

The gloaming was already coming down.

Robert drove his ponies home, gave them the hospitality of the farmyard and a shake of hay, then went in to his wife.

Tea was ready and his mother, quicker to mark the young man's moods than Avis, asked him presently if anything were amiss.

"Don't tell me the cold have got into you, Bob," she said.

"No, mother," he answered; "but a wisht thing happened. Poor Mr. Bullstone--up over--sitting like a lone hawk on a rock. He wouldn't come for a drop of tea, though I begged him, and he's going mad terrible fast by the look of it."

"He'll kill himself before much longer," declared Avis. "And he'll kill Auna too: she's fretting to fiddlestrings about him. A very good thing if poor father was to die, I reckon. For what's the use of living like him--a scourge to himself and nuisance to everybody else?"

"He's suffered such a lot that it's shaken his mind," answered Bob. "But no doubt, in good hands, he could be coaxed round again. He's not so old as he looks, and he's tremendous strong, else he couldn't face the weather like he does."

"Maybe Huntingdon will calm him. A spot surely to tame man or beast," said the elder Mrs. Elvin; "but yet, on the other hand, it might overthrow all. I'm very sorry for Auna--'tis far too much to put upon a young creature."

"Her father's her life in a manner of speaking," replied Robert, "Where he goes, she'll go. Peter says that Huntingdon would be a good thing very likely, for Mr. Bullstone hinders more than he helps now. He's getting a bit jealous of Peter--so Peter thinks."

"Not him," answered Avis. "That's only Peter's vanity."

"What does your grandfather say about it?" asked the mother-in-law of Avis.

"He haven't had much time to think about my father, because grandmother was so queer for a bit when mother died. But she's pretty right again now, and they're soon moving into the villa, and grandfather's terrible busy. By the same token I must go down to-morrow and help Aunt Jane. I've promised to take the children off her hands for a few hours. A great upheaval."

"So it is then. A very strange thought--the post-office and the shop without Mrs. Huxam in it; but it's time they retired and the name will be carried on."

Avis considered.

"For how long I wonder. Uncle Jeremy's got it all at his finger ends--so he says, but John Henry vows he'll never stick to it."

Her mother-in-law brought the subject back to Jacob.

"I hope Barlow Huxam will consider about your father in a Christian spirit," she said. "Something should be done for Mr. Bullstone, and I wouldn't say but what you and John Henry oughtn't to try and get a doctor to him."

"He'd never see nobody, and he's turned against us," declared Avis. "He's fairly friendly to grandfather I believe, but not to grandmother. He never did like her, because she saw he was not a godly man, and she kept mother away from him when the devil tempted poor mother to try and go back. He's the fifth wheel of a coach now--father is. A know-nought, rash man always, and it's no unkindness to wish he was out of his sufferings I'm sure. He's a disgrace to us all in a manner of speaking, mother."

The elder woman considered and shook her head.

"That's a hard word," she answered,

"He ended mother's days whether or no," argued Avis. "And mother was always a thousand times more to us than father. And you can't expect us--especially me with my honeymoon spoiled--to feel overmuch for him."

"Auna was always the one for your father," said Mrs. Elvin. "It was the same from the beginning."

"Because she was so like mother," answered Avis. "Mother must have been the daps of Auna, when she was young. But why Auna always clung to father and put him before everybody, none of us ever did know. Grandmother's done with her, because she's a liar."

"They are too different in their natures to get on very well I expect," said Robert. "Come out and look at the ponies afore it's dark, Avis."

They were still lovers and only happy in each other's company.